Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I follow several of the authors who contributed to this book. I have bought their products, and a few I have had conversations with. Part of my disappointment stems from the fact that they are capable of much better. In business (and other organizations) there is always a risk of groupthink. A group of smart individuals will all agree that a bad idea is good because of a desire to conform to the group. The voice in our head tells us that we must be crazy to question an idea that all of these smart people think is a good idea. I have to wonder if something similar happened here, because the contributors are smart people capable of far better. I was excited about this book when my email started blowing up with the announcements from the authors. I waited patiently for it to come out, and I even bought it twice because Amazon cancelled the book at least once. (That might be a missed marketing opportunity...the book so controversial that Amazon doesn't want you to read it!) The title is a homage to Napoleon Hill's classic "Think and Grow Rich." That title also invokes certain expectations that the book fails to deliver on. Napoleon Hill interviewed successful business leaders of his day and from those interviews distilled certain principles for success. If one of the 24 authors here had done that this would be an interesting book. What are the common themes and what are the uncommon themes? Everyone talks about how important an email list is. There are differing opinions on whether it is better to write a few books or many books. Because this book is a compilation of "interviews," there is no overall point of view that attempts to add value from the bits and pieces. I use the term "interview" lightly. A true interviewer asks follow-up questions to explore answers organically. The content here appears to be a set of standard questions emailed to authors to respond to. Someone has edited these responses, but with a light hand. As a result, there is a substantial amount of redundancy. Email lists are really, really important...how do I know? Because each contributor says so. What I expected from the book based on the marketing was that each of these experts was going to talk about a specific area of being a successful author. For example, Matt "Buck Flogging" Stone has a whole business on publishing and cover design. In his piece he even talks about how he no longer writes much because he focuses on the business. If he had written in some detail about a narrow aspect of what he has learned from working with authors, that would be unique and interesting content. Marc Guberti is brilliant at virtual summits. Talking about how he uses those as an author or how he puts them together would be gold. One of the limitations of the book is that it is light on specifics and details. An author will talk about the value of email lists and newsletters, but they do not talk about how they use these tools with their audience. Someone could talk about how when they started, they did these things which did not work, then they did this which works better. For example, how many times do you contact your audience? How long are the pieces? Do you put the entire text in the email or do you drive clickthroughs to a longer piece on a blog? What is the ratio of marketing pieces versus other content or should all content have a call to action and thus are all marketing pieces? The introductions to each chapter were like we are part of a cool kids club, and it was not clear that they were aligned to the author's branding. For example, in the introduction for Matt Stone, the editor talkks about how they are like siblings, and how she knew him when he went by "Buck Flogging." Well, the most recent communication I received from him (a few days ago), he was still using the "Buck Flogging" persona. If pressed, I have heard him say that you can figure out his real name, but that he primarily operates his business under his psuedonym. It's great that you are all friends and complete each other's sentences, but that does not create value for me the reader. The book fails to be a variant on the "Think and Grow Rich" concept since he lacks the curation and synthesis of ideas of the original. It also fails to be a showcase for the particular expertise of the authors. A powerful structure would be to use the life cycle of authoring and publishing a book as a framework and then use specific authors to talk about pieces of this process. Instead what we have seems to be a light PR piece. The authors have publically stated that their goal is to reach the USA Today Bestseller list, but it feels like the motivation is about the publicity rather than producig content that has value to the reader. Despite my disappointments with the book, I do think there is one aspect of the book that offers some value. Most of the authors talk about overcoming set backs and challenges. Those stories can be helpful for authors who hope to find their own success as stories of inspiration. This is a "you can do it" motivational book and less a "how to do it" book. Unfortunately for me, I was expecting more of the latter. I also think it is important to note that the book is not a direct sales piece. Most of the authors reference that they sell courses and other services targetting authors, but links to landing pages are not provided here. You would have to do some searching to find those offerings. A pro tip is to read the 2-3 star reviews in your niche to discover how as an author you can improve on existing offerings. My hope is that someone who is attempting a similar book will read this review and do something better.